To the Bone
by Road Rhythm
Summary: Half his instincts are crying out against this, because he's not supposed to hurt Sam. The other half are twisting up his insides in a sick mess of lust, because what he's doing is making Sam beg in all the right ways, and that—that he does want.


Warnings: Masochism; consensual but conflicted sexual situations; massively unsafe sex; gore; electrical play.  
>Thanks to Lavishsqualor for betaing.<p>

* * *

><p>When Dean first figures it out, it's no big deal. So Sam likes it when Dean nips too hard, when Dean accidentally plants his elbow in a wound or a bruise. So what? He's fucking his brother. Kind of a drop in the bucket, all told. Anyway, it's not like they have to go out of their way to have pain in their sex, given that they're always getting thrown into hard surfaces. It's no big. It even gives Dean a little, secret thrill.<p>

He can't remember exactly at what moment this entered their lives. There was no Very Special Episode where Sam sat down with big, sensitive eyes and said, "Say, Dean, I'd really like it if you could start hurting me during sex." It would be easier to pinpoint where what they do with each other started at all, and that's saying something.

But he can remember the first time he used it on purpose, planned out ahead of time. It was another motel room, another shitty bed. Another weeks-long build up to getting in each other's faces and then getting in each other's pants.

"Christ, Sammy," he gasped.

Sam flexed underneath him, long lines of his body rippling in a way Dean still hasn't forgotten. They were fucking the way they usually do: out of sheer excess energy, a collision of pent-up frustration and availability. That time, though, Sam was just wound way too tight, like Dean had known he would be. It didn't matter how he rubbed himself or pushed back onto Dean's cock, the poor son of a bitch just couldn't seem to come. Dean had a good time with that.

Sam groaned. "Dean."

Dean snorted in spite of himself. Only Sam could manage that combination of pleading and bitching in the space of one word. "What's the matter, Sammy?" He held himself up over his brother's back, dripping sweat, coasting on shallow thrusts that could scarcely satisfy him, never mind Sam. "Having some trouble, there?"

"Bite me," Sam's voice came from somewhere in the pillow his face was smashed into.

Dean did.

Sam bowed up off the mattress with a cry of pain and surprise and something else. Dean got a better grip on his arm, sucked away the blood he'd drawn without releasing his jaws from Sam's shoulder, and started driving into him. Every time Dean's teeth yanked on the wound, Sam made a sound at the back of his throat. It got higher and hoarser every time, and then he was keening, and then he was coming—not the shallow, still-frustrated orgasm they'd both gone into this expecting, but a shaking, breath-hitching, shocked and total orgasm that went on and on, long after it had pulled out Dean's own.

Dean laughed and turned the enormous, gangling figure over. Sam's pupils were still blown with endorphins. He didn't come down fully for half an hour.

Mainly, at the time, Dean felt triumphant. He'd tried this new thing, and boy, did it work. Who was a god in the sack? _Booyah_.

If it bothered him a bit that the wound where he broke skin stayed red and angry for a week, he didn't dwell on it. He's not about to start dwelling on it now. It gets Sam off. Dean gets off on Sam getting off.

The pain thing even holds a certain appeal beyond the effect it has on Sam, though that's the primary draw. There are few things more fun than getting Sam good and bitchy, giving every anal-retentive, OCD sore spot the kid has an Indian rug burn for about a week, before smearing it all together with one hand on his cock and the other biting into the smooth skin of his thigh until bruises blossom and Sam's incoherent. He can _always_ make Sam come with it. It's instant control over the situation, like driving the Impala, as good, better. Occasionally, maybe, Dean finds it a little disconcerting when Sam falls away into a place that he doesn't understand, but it's worth it to see him flushed and messed up with his whole all-American nice boy thing blown to pieces.

Or his brooding psychic thing. Or his demon blood thing. Or his predestined master of hell thing.

So that's what it's like. It's there, it's just something that's part of them, and against some of the stuff they've done to each other, really, Sam being kinky doesn't even register. But all the time it's creeping forward.

Dean doesn't even start to realize just how far forward until the day they're hunting another wendigo. It's in Minnesota where it belongs, this time. Dean's pleased about that right off: a well-behaved monster who knows the rules and respects them. Fucking finally.

The hunt starts off smoothly. All their aliases hold; it's only an hour's drive from their motel to the woods, so they won't have to camp; and no civilians want to tag along with them. Just Dean and Sam, back on the road—the real Sam, complete Sam, given back to him by Death himself. And they've hunted a wendigo before, so it really is just like old times.

Except that this one is faster than the last one. Dean doesn't know why that possibility never even occurred to him.

Their afternoon goes to laying down Algonquian protection glyphs. This time, they're not making a tight ring, but a long, wide V. They settle in at the mouth to wait for nightfall and their prey. Flare guns again: Sam argued about their chances of starting a forest fire if a shot goes wide, but Dean doesn't like to mess with what's not broke. Besides, if they do start one, they'll definitely get the sucker.

Sam suggests playing bait, but idly, without much real interest in the job. Dean puts paid to the idea with a look. As if he'd put his brand-new brother on the hook.

"You're right, though," he says, stretching. "We need something to draw it out. Keep talking, let it follow our voices."

Sam, on the other stump, checks his flare gun and scans the woods again. The last, deep gold sunlight is slanting through the trees, and twilight's coming on. "Twenty questions," he says.

Dean grins and shades his eyes, finger resting on the trigger. They haven't played twenty questions since before Dean went to hell. "Shoot, Sammy."

"Is it bigger than the Impala?"

"Nope."

"Is it smaller than the Impala?"

Dean scowls. "No."

Sam sniggers. "Well, that didn't last very long."

"Fine, my turn. Can I put it in my mouth?"

"Knowing you, you probably would."

"Can I see it right now?"

"Nope."

"Would Bobby put it in his mouth?"

"Fuck, no."

"Is it supernatural?"

Sam appears to think about it. "Reports vary."

Somewhere not far off, that unnatural sound like a hollow tube swooping through the air filters through the trees. Both of them adjust their grips on their flare guns. "Is it out here with us?" Dean asks, casually.

"I think so."

Another _swoooop_. Closer, now. A growl.

"Is it alive?" They both rise from their stumps, bringing their weapons up to pan carefully over the forest in front of them.

"Oh, yeah," says Sam, and then it's there.

Dean squeezes off a shot and instantly drops the single-use flare gun, reaching into his jacket for another before he even sees whether he hit anything. He didn't. He and Sam run in arcs from each other, moving to block the creature's way out of the trap. It screams—angry, not hurt—and Dean loses it in the trees.

"You see it, Sam?" he calls without taking his eyes off the woods.

"No, I—"

Dean turns as he's still scanning and the wendigo is there.

He's sailing through the air before he can even fire, much less think. He hits the ground and feels a stone tear through his jeans and down his shin. He's still got his breath. "Sam! Three o'clock!"

Phosphorus fire streaks through the trees. The next scream is human.

"Sam!"

Dean hurtles through the brush. Sam's flare is still sputtering in damp moss and the wendigo is still on top of Sam. It's just enough to give Dean a clean shot.

The wendigo twists, too-long arms thrashing as the fire eats from its belly outward. Dean races around it to get to Sam. He's at the base of a tree, left arm still flung before him as he watches the wendigo go up with something like wonder in his eyes. His arm is—

"Sam, talk to me," Dean says as he drops to his knees. There's already a lot of blood.

"I'm good," Sam says as Dean looks him over with the flashlight. "Hurts, but I can still move it."

Dean suspects that the only reason it hurts as little as Sam's acting like it does is because of the shock and adrenaline. He carefully parts the shreds of Sam's jacket to get a look at the wound. Parallel talon marks run from his shoulder down half his arm, deep and welling with blood.

Dean's knuckles are white on his Maglite. Another three inches to the right, and the claws would have gone through Sam's carotid artery.

Dean shrugs out of his shirt and gets Sam's other hand clamped down over the wound with it. "You're goddamned lucky you don't need a tourniquet," he says, and pulls Sam to his feet with an arm around his waist. "Come on."

It's a half-hour stumble back to the Impala. Dean hasn't checked his leg, but he's encouraged by the fact that it's hurting less, not more. Sam's arm, on the other hand, is doing pretty much exactly how Dean expected.

"God," says Sam, leaning back against the car, eyes shut and face white. "That really hurts."

"You think?" Dean snaps, tossing their gear in the trunk. He comes round to open the passenger door and manhandles Sam in even though the guy is already climbing in under his own power. "Watch the upholstery," he says, not because he cares.

He tears away down the forest's gravel access road and takes the highway back to the motel at eighty. For the first half of the ride, Sam's withdrawn except for hissing and wincing over the slashes in his arm—pity his pain kink doesn't make him any less bitchy out of bed—and Dean keeps his mind on doing the hour-long drive in forty minutes or less. But then, maybe because the endorphins have kicked in, maybe because Sam lives to thwart Dean's moods, Sam gives a sort of laugh and Dean looks over to see him smiling.

"What?" he asks, uncertain.

Sam's grin widens. "Dude, wendigo."

Dean looks from the road to his brother to the road again. "Yeah, noticed that."

"No, I mean…" Sam tilts his head back against the seat and grins at the ceiling. His new skin is going waxen. "Never mind."

"Oh, no, please," Dean says, with a surge of irritation. "Tell me what's so great about the wendigo."

"Just…" Sam's still holding Dean's shirt over his wound with his good hand, but it doesn't look like he's holding very hard and Dean snaps at him to press the fuck down. "Just an auld lang syne thing, I guess."

Dean wants to say, _Are you fucking kidding me?_, but instead he presses his lips into a tight line and stares at the road's yellow line disappearing into the darkness.

Apparently Sam's not ready to let it go. As Dean's pulling into the motel parking lot, Sam starts laughing again, chortling, even, in a way that sounds so much younger than it should and makes Dean want to punch him. Anger is still rising in him as he comes around to grab Sam by the back of his shirt and propel him toward the door. "Seriously, man. Six years later, a goddamn wendigo," Sam says, like that explains anything, and something in Dean snaps.

He gets the door open, shoves Sam through it, and checks him up against the wall. "This is funny to you?" he says, voice low.

Sam laughs like they're talking about a prank one of them pulled on the other. "After everything, Dean! Wendigo, demons, angels, _wendigo_."

"A wendigo will still kill you, Sam!"

Sam's face splits in a radiant grin. "Exactly!"

That's when Dean fists his hands in Sam's jacket and shoves the full length of his body against Sam's. Hard. Meant to hurt. How _dare_ he laugh at this when Dean just got him back.

"You son of a bitch," Dean whispers. The smile falls off Sam's face.

Doesn't he _get_ it? Doesn't he get that they're at the end of the line, and destiny is done with them, and the next time he dies Dean doesn't get him back? He's riding such a flash flood of emotions that he doesn't even think when he grabs his brother's arms, both of them. Sam's sharp gasp cuts through his blind rage.

And Sam's cock jerks against Dean's thigh.

Dean just stares at him for a long moment. Sam looks back, and Dean can feel his erection growing between their bodies. Lips set in a line, chilled with anger, Dean flexes his hand over Sam's biceps and twists.

Sam makes a helpless, pleading sound. His lips are parted, his cheeks are flushed. He's so turned on he doesn't know which way's up. And Dean gets off on Sam getting off.

He presses his thigh against Sam's cock, hard. Sam's breaths come shallowly. Something has run out of him and the wall takes his weight as he tips his head back. Dean watches through a haze, watches the sinews in Sam's neck lengthen and tighten in time with his breathing. He slides his hand down the bloody mess, digs his thumb in. Sam's hips jerk against his and his good hand comes up to clench in Dean's jacket.

People think that hell is a purely spiritual realm. It isn't. The bodily dimension is but one of many there, but no resource is overlooked. Every foothold is exploited. Dean presses his fingers into the slippery warmth, looking for where the line of the radial nerve should lie under its cushion of muscle.

A hoarse cry claws its way out of Sam's throat, but his erection isn't softening. Dean keeps going, kneading, probing, and Sam keeps rutting against his hip.

Then Dean digs his fingers straight into the gash in his shoulder, and Sam comes without Dean even touching him.

Sam slumps down the wall, astonishment on his face as much as anything. He's ashen yet flushed, lips bitten red, eyes huge and dark in the pallor of his face, and that's it for Dean. He hauls his not-so-little brother up and throws him on the bed.

He wraps his messy hand tight in Sam's hair and kisses him, working the jacket off his shoulders with the other. Sam's hands are there, too, on Dean's leather jacket and then his belt buckle. They're slower and less forceful than usual, but they're there.

"Sam—" Dean gasps, in between fighting with clothing.

Jacket, shoes, flannel, tee— Dean curses as he yanks at Sam's jeans and boxers, trying to get them down and off his uncoordinated body, fighting the heavy limbs as much as the material. Sam isn't stringy anymore. He's not even gangly. He's… he's _massive_, is what he is.

"How does anyone even grow like that?" Dean mutters to himself.

"Someone kept feeding me," says Sam, sounding dazed.

"Shut the fuck _up,_ you son of a— Shut _up_—"

Dean plunges his tongue into Sam's mouth and Sam lets him. Dean grabs the lube one handed and slicks himself up without even caring that he's smearing blood over his cock; he just needs to get _in_, to feel Sam's life hot around him, and he lines their hips up blindly with barely any preparation and shoves.

Sam shudders, like the invasion's stolen his breath. An instinct deeper than the one for sex keeps Dean still. "Sammy?"

"Fine, Dean. Right here, fine—"

Sam reaches up for him and Dean goes, tucking his face against Sam's neck as he drives into his body again and again.

"Shh, Dean."

"Sam, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy—"

He's chanting it, doesn't even know if it's out loud or not. He's got his arms around his brother, tight, all the way around, tight, tight. Sam's hand rubs circles into his back.

Dean buries his face in Sam's shoulder as he comes.

White space. His senses wind down like a cooling engine, and he gradually becomes aware of Sam's skin under him, Sam's breath against his ear. Dean just lies there for a moment before he pulls back. There's something lukewarm and sticky on his belly. He realizes that he doesn't know whether it's blood or come, and the realization pours dread into his stomach.

He doesn't want to look at the bed, but he does. The sheets are ruined. Huge, dark stains are chaotic on the bedding and the pillows, shading from maroon to almost black in the weak yellow light. There are bloody handprints on the comforter. Dean's. And Sam is spilled bonelessly across it all, eyes fluttering shut as he turns his face toward the pillow. The fucked out flush looks wrong across his white skin, more like a fever than satiation. One hand is still limp and careless over Dean's ass. His shoulder and arm are glistening red in three long, dark furrows. Dean swallows and reaches out.

"Sammy. Sammy, I'm so sorry."

His hands are shaking as he runs them over the tears in Sam's skin. No, they're deeper than that; in his muscle tissue. "Jesus."

Sam just groans into the pillow—not even a pained groan; his "I'm tired and beat up so _lemme alone_" groan. "I'm fine, Dean."

Dean's head whips up. "What? What the hell is _wrong _with you, Sammy?" He shakes him gently. He can feel the clammy tightness in his own face where the blood's drained away.

"Dean, it's okay—"

"It's not _okay_, you fucking moron, it's _worse!"_

Sam just blinks at him muzzily; Dean knows he's started to check out from blood loss and afterglow and adrenaline crash. But just for a moment, his eyes clear, and in this moment of lucidity Dean can see right to their bottom. And he can see that Sam doesn't much mind.

He takes his hands away. While Sam collapses back onto the mattress, Dean finally goes for the first aid kit. Like he should have twenty minutes ago.

As he's unpacking what he needs to stitch Sam up on the bathroom counter, he catches sight of his own face in the mirror. He suddenly remembers his reflection in the car's darkened side window years and years ago in Saginaw, Michigan, racing to Roger Miller's house while Sam ranted and demanded in the passenger seat:

—_Tell the truth. You can't tell me this doesn't freak you out._

—_This doesn't freak me out._

º º º º

It's not like Dean's never been with a kinky chick before. Mainly they liked tying him up, but hell, yeah, he's done it. Grinned all the way through it, too. But it was never like this thing with Sam. It was pretend, it was play, it was a little bit silly. It was a few toys in a shoebox under the bed. It was just good, clean fun.

This isn't fuzzy handcuffs or novelty riding crops. Sam likes _pain_, the real deal, and lots of it.

Dean doesn't quite know how he feels about that.

Part of him still leaps immediately to guilt mode, like it's his fault, like he must have screwed up the kid's wiring. But he's getting better about that sort of thing, and the bigger part of him knows that this isn't anything he did.

And no, when he's honest with himself, he can't really see this as something other than the sort of thing that might be somebody's fault.

One reason it's weird is that, while he might be fucking his brother, it's _not like that_. They're fucking, not dating. Every time they go for each other's belt buckles, there is always the adrenaline rush of guilt that things like museum heists and high explosives just don't give anymore. It happens when it happens. The product is something they won't shy away from and won't talk about later. Dean isn't used to thinking about it. Well, maybe he's used to thinking about what it says about them, just a little, but not about how they do it or what he could learn from Cosmo magazine.

Dean has no choice but to think about this part.

º º º º

Though Dean might let Sam have the lion's share of the reading, he's no slouch at research himself. He's a hunter, a good one, and investigation is half the job. This isn't a hunt, but it feels like one.

So he has no trouble finding the local fetish fellowship, even though he had no idea going in it would be called that. There's a website that lists their events; they have monthly meetings and a biweekly munch, a _"munch,"_ for God's sake, and twice a year they hold a food drive for the homeless shelter. Dean wipes the browser history. Sam will just think he's been surfing porn, anyway.

"Hey, let's stick around here for a few days," he says when Sam gets back with dinner in a paper bag.

"Huh? Why?"

"Well, y'know, no job right now, and I saw you eyeing the college library—"

Sam snorts, exactly the way Dean banked on. "Yeah, right. What are we really staying for?"

Dean lets his face split in a grin. "Thursday. Taphouse. Cowgirl night."

Sam rolls his eyes and returns his attention to digging out the food.

Dean spends Tuesday and Wednesday teasing Sam about it, just to make sure he won't decide to join him ("C'mon, Sammy. Saved the world, climbed out of the Cage, time to have a little fun!" "Thanks. Think I'll take my chances with the library"). When Thursday evening rolls around, he drops Sam at the library with a shitpile of notebooks and heads out to the Green Valley kinksters' munch.

He's never going to tell Sam about it. What would be the point? He's not going for some kind of couple's Hints from Heloise session, he tells himself. He just wants to understand.

At seven o'clock, with the sun still gilding the edges of things, he rolls up in front of a cheerful little restaurant in the historic downtown. It's got flower boxes under its windows and green and white umbrellas on the patio. He walks past the _Please wait to be seated_ sign like he knows where he's going and ambles through the sunlit interior, looking for the semi-private party room at the back the website said to look for. A guy at the correct table twists around a second before Dean gets through the doorway and gives him a friendly smile, like he knows Dean's looking for them. Dean's smile in return is a little sheepish.

Chairs are shuffled around, and Dean finds himself sitting down with seven or eight other people who look—ordinary. They're wearing street clothes, not one of them is all in black, and they're having two or three different animated conversations about sports, TV, and sex.

A blonde MILF sitting next to a wiry guy she's taller than turns to Dean and offers him her hand across the plate of the girl sitting between them. "Hey, I'm Gerty. You new to the scene?"

She's got a necklace on, just one of those chunky silver chains with a heart strung on it like he's seen all over the place, except that the heart is engraved with the word _His_ and she doesn't wear it quite like a necklace. "Hey, I'm Dean," he says, meeting her firm handshake for a moment. "I'm… I don't really know what I am."

The dude next to her, who apparently owns her, if Dean's reading that necklace right, grins like a pint-sized leprechaun. "Good answer!"

Another woman—henna red-head, a little past the MILF stage, quiet and intent—leans in from Dean's other side and says, gravely, "Bottom or top?"

Dean almost chokes on his drink, but he brazens it out with a shit-eating grin. "A little bit of both," he says, speaking for Sam as much as for himself.

She nods. Then she goes back to listening to the conversation happening next to her, which is about whipping.

"We should really do a demo on that soon," says a girl with a pixie cut and a femme girlfriend. "Singletails, safety, all that good stuff."

Dean watches and wonders if he can steer the conversation in a different direction. It's close to what he needs, but whips and chains don't seem to be Sam's thing. Unless the chain is being used as a whip, but Dean can't do that, won't do that, and even Sam knows he can't afford to be slowed down on a hunt by real injuries. Anyway, whips are loud, and they live in motel rooms.

"Yeah, we should," says a nerdy-looking guy in a business suit. "We don't have anything on the calendar next month, do we?"

"Yes, we do," says the quiet henna lady. "Turk's doing a demo on electro-play."

"Oooo," says pixie girl. "Month after that, then."

"Electro-play?" Dean says, giving henna lady his full attention.

She looks slightly surprised. "Yeah, just what it sounds like. You interested?"

He thinks about it for a moment. "Might be."

"Giving or receiving?"

"Receiving," he says, which right now is true. He wants to vet it first.

"Well, you should definitely go to a demo before you get started. Electro-play is edge play, dangerous."

Not what he's looking for. "All of it?" he says, not bothering to hide his disappointment.

The woman—Meredith, he learns when someone asks her to pass the salt—scrutinizes him for a moment. "Violet wands are very safe, if you get a reputable one. Every time I bring my wand to a play session, my dance card is always full."

"Oh, right, _those_," Dean lies. "I've always wondered, what do they really feel like, anyway?"

She taps a big, hard-walled case sitting under her chair. She has most of the table's attention by now. "Want to find out? I'm taking my kit to a group scene right after this."

"What's it like?"

"With a globe electrode and a low setting, it can feel like bubbles fizzing on your skin. Crank it all the way up and use a fine edge, and you'd swear you were being cut open with a scalpel if you didn't know better."

Dean smiles. "Is that right."

Meredith calmly gets her gear out of her case and fits something into another something that plugs into the wall. She gives him a rod to hold in one hand. Dean pushes up his sleeve, and she runs a little metal wheel slowly over his forearm, up and down, up and down. Fast sometimes, slowly other times, and methodically, just like if she were skinning him with a real knife.

Yeah. That is right.

º º º º

Turns out violet wands are expensive. Also turns out it's a big damn pain in the ass to get a package delivered when you don't have a permanent address. He has to tell the company to send the thing to Robert Singer with absolutely no product information on the box, and then he has to order new shocks, and then he has to tell Bobby that both packages are parts for the Impala and they'll swing by so Dean can put them in in a week or two, if that's all right.

Bobby says something sarcastic about living to serve, but underneath the banter, Dean can hear the lingering reticence; and when he tells Sam, he can see the cringe that his brother tries to hide. Dean clamps down on the desire to hit both of them and points them Bobby-ward when their next hunt's done.

The car really does need new shocks, anyway.

While Sam's out helping Bobby rotate some of the piles of rust that make up his scrap inventory and they're hopefully working on the bygones thing, Dean unpacks the violet wand. He holds up the slender glass tubes it came with to the light. They're pretty, but he won't be using them. He replaces them in the foam, digs a small knife out of his duffel, fits the body contact tool into the wand's aperture, and grits his teeth.

It hurts. It's not the worst pain he's ever felt, not by miles, not even on Earth; but it still hurts a lot more than anything with a pansy name like "violet wand" has a right to. It'll hurt even more when he gets done making some modifications. If he couldn't see the knife tracing over his skin and leaving nothing but a thin, pink line like a sunburn behind, then yes, he would think someone was slicing into him. He cannot imagine why somebody would actually want to feel this.

He packs the stuff away as soon as he's got the hang of it. After that, it's just a matter of keeping the wand's case buried under the pile of laundry in the back seat and waiting for life to slow down enough to give it a try.

Maybe three weeks later, they finish off a good, old-fashioned haunting and roll into Wahoo, Nebraska. The skies are blue, the park has ducks, and the motel is mostly empty except for them. They clean up at pool in a couple of bars before they make it back to the room, pleasantly buzzed and in high spirits, and Dean decides that this is the time.

He tosses Sam his room key. Sam catches it without looking. "Hey, man, I'll meet you in there. Want to get something out of the car."

Sammy's a little primed, just enough to be a smart ass. He smirks. "What's that?"

"Picked up some Midol for you. Go on."

Sam goes, with the slight swagger he uses when he's walking across a bar and wants people to watch him, and wants Dean to see them watch him. Dean feels a little warmth settle in his belly despite himself. Little bastard.

He digs the hard-walled, foam-lined box out from under the laundry and pushes into the motel room. Sam flips off the TV and raises his eyebrows.

Dean holds up the wand case and, feeling like an idiot, tips his head towards it. "Happy birthday, Sammy."

Sam looks confused and just slightly wary. "It's the middle of June, Dean."

"Yeah, well, better late than never."

He obviously still isn't getting it. "What is it? Knives?"

"It's something you'll like."

"Is that right," says Sam, looking at Dean levelly.

Dean swallows. They don't usually do this in cold blood. "Strip."

Sam's eyebrows shoot up. "Thought that was my line."

"Yeah, well, not tonight." Sam gives a little laugh of surprise and starts unbuttoning his cuffs. Instead of watching the show, Dean turns away to open the violet wand case on the bed. He stares down at its contents, fingering the unassuming cylinder that's the actual wand, then pulls lube, a little bundle of thin, conductive wire, and a roll of duct tape out of his duffel.

When he looks back up, Sam's perched on the other bed with his knees pulled up, avoiding Dean's gaze. It figures that the guy has no problem letting his brother _torture_ him, but standing around naked is more than he can handle. Dean's hit with a pulse of longing. Sam's exposure rakes up a slew of impulses and emotions, not least of which is lust; there's a whole list of things he'd like to do with Sam sitting there naked and shy. Flaying his nerves with electricity isn't on it.

He slaps a grin on his face and watches Sam relax infinitesimally. "Ready, Sammy?"

"For what? What is that thing?"

"It's called a violet wand. I figured, you know, since you're a princess…"

Sam rolls his eyes, but he's smiling a little. "You're buying sex toys?"

Dean holds up the wand, turning it over in his hand. "Well, I guess it's a sex toy. Anyway, it's your kind of thing, and that's what matters. C'mere."

Dean straps the body contact pad to Sam's calf with the duct tape and gives a genuine grin at the thought of how much and how unsexily that's going to hurt when it's time to take it off. Sam watches with open curiosity, and Dean can see he's getting more than just intellectually intrigued.

Dean shucks his own clothes and crawls up on the bed with him. The wicked little switch of wire is waiting on the night stand. It's fine, it's good. It won't harm him. Dean runs a hand over the wendigo scars on Sam's arm, giving the nape of his overgrown neck a nip and palming his cock. It'll be good. Sam will get off on it, he always does, and Dean gets off on Sam getting off.

Sam reaches back to grab whatever part of Dean he can. "Dean," he says, in that voice rough with emotion and warm with familiarity.

Dean jacks him a few times, but Sam barely needs the assistance. "Got something for you," he mumbles into Sam's stupid-long hair. "Gonna feel real nice, feel just the way you like it."

That gets an inarticulate groan. "What about you?"

Dean catches Sam's fingers where they're groping toward Dean's crotch. "Don't worry about me. Up."

Dean will fuck him soon. In a minute. If he's still soft, it's just because he's been busy getting things arranged.

He guides Sam to walk forward on his knees until he's kneeling right at the headboard. "Hands on the wall, Sammy."

Like this, hands on the wall, arms out straight, Dean has free access to Sam's front as well as his back. The way Sam's breaths are coming just a little quicker says that he knows it. Dean reaches for the wire bundle.

It's just five strands of wire, bound into a handle with electrical tape at one end and fanning out at the other. The metal is thick enough to give a little resistance if he pushes with it, thin enough to flex to follow the contours of a body. It will feel like knives, but it's harmless. It's harmless. It's harmless.

Sam gasps when Dean rakes it over his back. "Jesus."

"Too much?" Dean asks, having trouble catching his breath himself. The only marks on Sam's back are red stripes, like a nasty sunburn. _Say yes,_ he prays.

Sam rolls his overdeveloped shoulders. "No."

So Dean drags the wire back across Sam's skin and lets go.

He sets up a rhythm. Up, down, up. Put down the wire. Jack Sam's cock. Wire again. Up, down, up. If Dean can hear Sam's voice sometimes saying something other than _please_, it's not important. Up, down, up. Sam's head is lolling back against Dean's shoulder, his lips parted, the light tracing his skin in a spill of gold. Up, down, up.

Dean's not hard, but he will be. Any moment now. It doesn't matter. Sam is hard, gasping, close. Dean gets off on Sam getting off. He's okay with it. He pulls the wire down Sam's spine, just like something with talons splitting him open. _Dean, something's up with you— God, Dean, God. There._ He's okay with it. He runs his thumb over the swollen crown of Sam's erection; he traces the wire over Sam's chest, so slow that Sam whimpers. He's okay with it. _Talk to me, Dean, are you— Oh, Jesus, yes, Christ—_

He's riding on fog. He hears Sam's cries in his ear and feels his own stomach sinking through the floor, but from somewhere far away.

He grits his teeth. There's no damage. It's no big. Sam wants it, so he wants it. He's good. He's good.

_Say!_

_I like green eggs and ham!_

_I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!_

Hands still on the wall, Sam drops his head forward. "Dean," he whispers. He looks like he's praying.

And _that_ gets Dean hard. He's slammed back into his body, right into the middle of the smell of Sam's sweat and the sheets under their knees. He's flailing Sam's skin with wire. He's running a hand up his cock while Sam bows into a taut line of pain. He's torturing his brother with live current, and Sam is asking for more.

Half his instincts are crying out against this. He doesn't want to hurt Sam. He's not supposed to hurt him. The other half are twisting up his insides in a sick mess of lust, because what he's doing is making Sam beg in all the right ways, and that, _that_ he does want.

Sam twists, strains, cries out in real pain, real agony; Dean knows what it looks like, and he can't fool his brain into believing that this is any different even if Sam's cock is straining red and hard as a brand. He feels his hands shaking. Suddenly his whole body is as queasy as it is aroused, and the room narrows down to one fact: He is hurting his brother.

Dean's been okay with a lot of things, but he is not okay with this.

"Dean," Sam says, breathless. "Dean, you're not—"

Sam removes his hands from the wall, tries to turn. Dean can't take it. Over. This has to be over. He rakes the wire over Sam's cock at the same moment that he thrusts a finger into his ass. Sam cries out, harsher, purer than he has before. Dean thinks he's going to throw up.

He throws everything he has into driving Sam over the edge, jacking him, working his prostate, running the phantom talons over his cock and the vulnerable soft skin of his balls over and over again, not even slowing down for the jolts the sloppy contact gives him. He's beating down his rising gorge the whole time. Sam is beautiful like this, Sam is hideous. Dean wants to bundle him up in blankets and carry him out of this burning house, but he hates him too much.

Sam comes blindingly hard, and Dean buries his face in the scars in his shoulder.

Dean doesn't come, so there is no comforting period of blackout. There is only Sam, sagging back against him but struggling to straighten and extricate himself from his grasp, and Sam's breathing, an audible fight for control.

After a few minutes Sam gets down and yanks the violet wand's plug out of the wall. He rips the duct tape off his leg without even a grunt and staggers back to the bed, moving like an animal who's caught its foot in a trap.

"Dean." His voice is scratchy.

Dean looks up when Sam's weight dips the mattress. His erection is long gone. Sam doesn't try to move toward him; Dean doesn't even know what he'd do if he did.

"Okay, there, Sammy?"

Sam just stares. It's odd, to see the blank expression underneath the rose and gold of ebbing arousal. "Dean, why did you do that?"

"Wanted to give you a birthday present."

Sam's eyes dart away as he nods, tightly. His eyes glisten. "Right."

Dean runs a hand through his hair. "So, uh, happy birthday."

"Christ, Dean!" Sam's voice actually breaks. "What would make you think that I wanted something like this?"

Dean is first numb, then flooded with anger, then numb again before he can act on it. "Call me crazy, Sammy, but the way you just came gave me the idea that you've got a thing for pain. You didn't want me electrifying your jewels?"

"Yeah, Dean, I wanted _that_, but I never wanted _wreck_ you." His lips quirk up in an odd, empty expression. "I'm a masochist, not a sadist."

Dean's mind flashes though a scrapbook of Sammy at his worst, and for a moment he thinks, _You sure?_ But he knows what Sam means. "I thought if it made you happy, I could deal with it."

Sam smiles faintly. "Doesn't work like that, Dean."

Dean draws a ragged breath and lets it out on a laugh that doesn't sound right. "Yeah, I'm starting to get that."

"Dean," Sam whispers, "I'm so sorry. I should've—"

"_Don't,"_ says Dean. "Don't you do that. It was my call, you son of a bitch."

There's a long silence. Dean feels more than sees Sam start to reach out for him several times.

"Let's just get some sleep," Dean says mechanically. He hears Sam swallow and then get up to pull on his sweats.

They sleep in separate beds. But they usually do.


End file.
